Such is the way of the world: long united, it must divide; long divided, it must unite.

So it went with the Siberian weasel and Shen Cong. They had worked together, then turned on each other, and now they were working together again. With spice, Shen Cong had brought a hostile weasel under his command.

"5.777H. The weasel hasn't gained even a full 1H, so that has to be the ceiling of its Talent. Beyond-Six-Star isn't something you reach just by wanting it." Riding on the Siberian weasel's head, Shen Cong read its Talent and felt a little easier. It was still inside the nuclear-grade range.

Watching the weasel move along under his feet, obedient to his orders, Shen Cong turned it over in his mind.

The weasel had not reached the lymph-gold and gland-gold stage yet, so it was still addicted to spice. Once it did reach that stage and lost its taste for spice, it might well slip his control.

"Do I look for a chance to kill it now, or wait until it loses its sense of taste and kill it then?"

Back during the fight over the Firestarter Spirit, the weasel had made it plain it meant to kill him, and that was not something Shen Cong could accept. Anything that meant him harm, human or animal, ought to be wiped out, and fast.

The Siberian weasel was on his must-kill list.

But watching it work willingly for a mouthful of spice, he found himself reluctant to kill it after all.

"It's a jin beast at Beyond-Five-Star Talent, close to Beyond-Six-Star — arguably the highest-Talent evolved beast on land. With the weasel to help me, working with me, there'd be nothing on land that could stand against us. Even a powerful Firestarter Spirit could be killed outright."

"Should I give it a chance to make amends?"

If he had never come to the Wuqiao oasis and seen for himself what the Wuqiao survivors had with their spirit-monkeys, Shen Cong would not have hesitated a moment. He would simply have trapped the weasel to death.

But he…